One of These Mornings
by ALC Punk
Summary: Post The Farm, Sam Anders does some thinking about the things he can't change.


Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Pairing (referenced): Kara Anders/Sam Thrace, Sharon/Helo  
Characters: Sam Anders, Jean Barolay  
Rating: PG, Length: 1100  
Set: post The Farm, no spoilers beyond that.  
Notes: Notebook fic, of course. Hah. Added to and such. Title is from the Moby song of the same name.

**One of These Mornings**  
_by ALC Punk!_

"I'll come back for you." Kara Thrace had said and then she'd left to go back to her fleet and find Earth. Sam believed her like you believe the teammate who swears if you win the game they're buying the first ten rounds. Then the game ends in victory and said person is nowhere to be found and claims days later that the bet wasn't recorded right, so it didn't count.

Not that he didn't believe her. He believed she believed they'd be back, but the odds were impossible she'd be able to get back. Sam knew military logic--if only from movies--and returning to dangerous territory to rescue fifty people or so was a pointless risk of manpower, lives, and distance. Caprica was back-tracking for a fleet that was searching for Earth.

Sam wasn't certain what he thought of that, either. Oddly, he believed Kara would find Earth. Maybe it was simply her crazy certainty. Or maybe he just found Earth easier to believe in than surviving Caprica. If the Cylons didn't get him, the radiation eventually would.

Once the raider was gone from his sight, Sam had gotten on with his job. He checked in with the people who'd been on the rescue mission and then organized dinner. Afterwards, he said a few words for Sue-Shaun and then disappeared to the room that he was using as quarters. It wasn't much, just a cleared space in a classroom that had been turned into storage with a bedroll on top of boxes. But it was better than the floor where the rats and bugs could get to him.

He'd known Sue-Shaun off and on for nearly ten years and it felt wrong that he would never see her again. There'd been so many others who were gone, but Sue-Shaun was a hurt closer to home. He had a brief moment of black humor as he stretched out on top of the bedroll. If Sue-Shaun were a Cylon, he'd see her again, inevitably. And then he'd have to kill her.

She was another person the Cylons had destroyed. Sam knew how futile his anger was, but let himself feel it, anyway. The fifty they'd lost the week before, Sue-Shaun, the half-dozen they could easily lose any time a patrol went out.

It was almost enough for him to take Kara's advice--retreat to their base camp up in the mountains and wait to die.

But that would risk the non-combatants and they would run out of radiation meds within a month. There would never be enough to keep them all safe up there, and the Cylons would find them eventually.

Sam found that he couldn't sleep, so he spent the night putting together future plans for their next few weeks. In the end, it felt like nothing more than the same thing: strike when they needed to, stay alive. Run when they had to. None of which put him to sleep. When dawn broke, he got up, sick of trying. He knew Barolay had been on night duty, and feeling a need to be away from his own thoughts, he made his way down to the school cafeteria to find her there, hunched over a mug of coffee.

Getting one of his own, he dropped down across from her with a soft sigh.

"Did you even frakking sleep?"

"Yeah," he lied.

She snorted in disbelief.

"I was thinking--"

"You know thinking is bad for you, Anders," Barolay mocked, sipping her coffee with a pleased sigh.

He half-grinned, and continued, "we need to get more people to base camp--it's safer there. And the Cylons might start looking harder since we broke Kara out."

Barolay raised an eyebrow, "Thought you wanted to go after the farms."

"I do. But unless you've got an army hidden in your pants, it's not feasible. We can do hit and runs, but how much damage will that cause?"

"Dunno until we try it," she nailed him with a look, "They don't want you protecting them, Anders."

"They don't want me killing them, either."

"You're not killing them, Sam. The Cylons are." She took another swallow of her coffee, "Besides, some 'em are talking of storming another farm as revenge for Sue-Shaun."

"They're idiots." But, damn, he felt some sort of pride in their continued resistance and ass-kicking.

"Says the man who trusted a Cylon," she shot back.

Sam was very aware that could have been suicide. But Helo had reassured him, and they needed her help. His gut had said he could trust her. His gut had said he could trust Kara, too. "I know it was a risk," he admitted. He'd considered shooting Boomer even with Helo's obvious familiarity with her. But then he'd seen the unconscious way her hand had crept into Helo's while she laid out her plan.

There had been something very human in the gesture--sure, the robot wanted to be a real girl, and yet he found himself remembering being ten and holding his mother's hand while the doctors took blood, and other instances. It had been a request for comfort, an offer to return the same. Sam hadn't missed the way they gravitated to each other. He'd never asked Helo why, though. He'd been more interested in what she could do for them. How many Cylon secrets she could spill (sadly, few).

Maybe it had all just been programmed, maybe not. Sam was only certain of one thing: finding Kara and Sue-Shaun had been his priority. Killing Boomer would have to wait.

Taking down the farms and destroying Cylons was his priority now.

"I hope she was worth it," Barolay said softly.

Sam pulled himself from his memories and stared at her, "She was."

Finishing the last of her coffee, Barolay stood and stretched, "I'm gonna catch a four-hour nap. Try not to let the Cylons invade until I'm up again, eh?"

"Lazy."

"You should try being lazy sometime, Anders. Might do wonders for your complexion," Jean tossed over her shoulder.

Sam watched her go for a moment, half-smiling, and then looked back at her empty coffee mug. They were almost out of the stuff again, everyone having become addicted to it months before. He snorted. They'd have to have another raid for coffee supplies soon, or no one would speak to each other.

If the Cylons really wanted to wipe them out, they could just deprive them of access to coffee and wait for them to shoot each other.

He took a sip of his now-lukewarm cup and decided maybe he should follow Barolay's advice.

A shout came from the other end of the room and a group of the newer resistance members poured in, heading for him, all talking at once about their ideas for taking down the farms, the Cylons, and president Adar.

Sam rubbed a hand over his face, considered running, and then sighed. And maybe he wouldn't be following Barolay's advice just yet.

-f-


End file.
